Jumping v stretching

The assumption that lies behind the contact hours issue is a deeply mistaken one. It is that universities are a simple extension of school, and that as at school, students should be given as much attention as possible. This misunderstanding is astonishing coming from Peter Mandelson, who read PPE at Oxford, though comprehensible enough among students first encountering a much more independent working style than they had while being prepared for the endless hoop-jumping at school…University is emphatically not about spoon-feeding and hand-holding through courses, but the very opposite. It is not about maximising contact hours, but about autonomy in thinking, researching and writing. We once used to ask, “What are you reading at university?” In those words lies the clue to what a university education is supposed to involve. People who get into university change educational gear and direction on doing so. They read and attend lectures, they write essays and discuss them with their tutors and peers. To do this in a knowledgeable and intelligent way, they have to do a lot of thinking, studying and discovering, the bulk of it for themselves, because no one else can do it for them.

And…that’s paradise, you know? That’s the whole point. The jumping through hoops part is no fun – it’s doing a lot of independent thinking, studying and discovering that is fun.

Maybe it is different in the UK than in the US. I grant Grayling what he says it is supposed to be for graduate school in the US, but undergraduate college is not quite as independent as he states, at least from the colleges I have seen.

Hm. The link doesn’t work, it just refreshes the page. Without seeing the broader context it’s hard for me to know if I disagree or agree with Grayling.

So I’ll say this (referring here mainly to the humanities). I would agree that there’s no doubt that independent study is more fun than the alternative, and moreover I would argue (passionately, with spittle) that it’s the only thing that makes any legitimate study worthwhile at all. But the demand for contact with genuine professionals in one’s studies is quite legitimate as well, so long as we understand “contact” to mean “meaningful, quality contact”. The sort where your professor can tell you in ordinary terms just why your essay really was crap, and give you personalized tips.

It matters because this is not the university that I’m coming to know. The North American system is steadily replacing tenured faculty members with contract faculty, and this trend undermines research integrity — and hence the quality of contact. The ensuing decline in quality applies both to contract and tenured professors. Contract profs are of limited value to the student, because they’re overworked with no time for students (and they’re ghettoized as second-tier academics anyway). And tenured profs are increasingly of limited use to the independent-minded student, since a decline in complement of research professionals correlates with a decline in intellectual diversity; without a bit of respectable intellectual diversity, the dwindling core faculty are free to be as irrelevant and trenchant in their research interests as they like (and as arbitrary in their assessments of the students as they please; nothing quite takes the force out of professor’s erroneous claim as well as pointing to the work of their immediate peers).

Well, those are problems in the humanities anyway. There are slightly different, though related, obstacles to independent research for the natural sciences. But by hook or by crook, mentoring and quality contact (not hand-holding, mind you, but contact) is essential to both.

I just found the link on the main page. It doesn’t look like I disagree with Grayling after all, since his comments in context are provincial in nature (evidently having to do with contact hours formulated by Mandelson on a per-student basis as opposed to a per-professor one, and certainly not in the sense of quality of contact).

Still, I can’t help but worry that Grayling is setting the stage for a tiered system himself. He tells us to ask: Where is the important work being done? Answer: By the student’s independent studies and in tutorials (and maybe a little bit of lectures on the side). The way that Grayling has framed the argument, I half expect any slightly dim taxpayer to come away from the article saying, “Yeah, get rid of those ‘less valuable’ professors, replace them with video screens! Hire more tutors and contract faculty!” Which of course when taken seriously as a practical programme, leads us into the bilious, dysfunctional, and unsustainable two-tiered system that has become the norm in North America.

Perhaps I have too personal an interest in this issue to be objective; however, I think this was right on the money.

I can’t speak to what is happening in the UK. However, here in Australia I am finding that my contact hours are being massively increased, and precisely for the reasons Grayling cites: many of my students are utterly incapable of self-direction; they expect (and the university administration expects) me to provide an astonishing degree of hand-holding and spoon-feeding. It is no longer their responsibility to make a token effort to understand the material before seeking help; instead, their first resort is to plant themselves in my office. This means I have to spend hours upon hours upon hours patiently explaining things to students who spent the entire lecture chatting to their friends and didn’t bother preparing the tutorial exercises – but, after all, it’s not as if my time is worth anything.

I have repeatedly made the argument that this doesn’t do students any favours (not to mention the impact on my research time and stress levels). However, when the continued existence of jobs and departments depends upon attracting ever-increasing numbers of student bums on seats, it seems that we can no longer expect anything significant of them, lest they enrol somewhere else.

Dave, point well taken. It would help quite a bit to know more about the local political context in which Grayling is making his remarks. For all I know, the threat of tierification is entirely moot over there.

“However, here in Australia I am finding that my contact hours are being massively increased, and precisely for the reasons Grayling cites: many of my students are utterly incapable of self-direction; they expect (and the university administration expects) me to provide an astonishing degree of hand-holding and spoon-feeding.”

Well, this is not my experience at all. And I’ve been teaching the same subject at an Australian university for some 20 years.

“However, when the continued existence of jobs and departments depends upon attracting ever-increasing numbers of student bums on seats, it seems that we can no longer expect anything significant of them, lest they enrol somewhere else.”

I’m afraid the phrase “bums on seats” is a “red rag to a bull” to me. One function of universities is to teach, and doing that requires that we have students: few students = few jobs; it’s that simple.

And students now have more options than they used to have, so if they think they will get better support somewhere else, they will go there. I don’t have a problem with that.

And I confess I have some doubts about the statement that “we can no longer expect anything significant of them”. Again, it does not match my experience.

The character flaw of modern undergraduates I hear the most complaints about, and I’ll admit that sometimes those complaints have come from my own lips, is the massively overdeveloped sense of entitlement so many of them display. I think that complaint has a certain “kids these days” aspect to it, and I’d be willing to bet a similar complaint has been made in different terms about every generation of young adults by their teachers – but that doesn’t mean it isn’t a real phenomenon.

But for my part, I’ve generally gotten very positive results by insisting that my students are capable of more and better work than they think they are, then evaluating their work based on the higher expectations I set. Usually, it turns out that they *are* capable of more – but no one’s ever thought to ask more of them, least of all themselves. Best of all, requiring students to work their asses off – real intellectual work, not mere memorization and regurgitation – turns out to be a neat end run around that overdeveloped sense of entitlement: If they don’t do the work and my comments on their paper explain in somewhat painful detail why and how their work isn’t up to snuff, the inflated, anchor-less sense of self-worth at the heart of entitlement takes a hit. If – usually, when – they really put in the effort and earn a better grade, that obnoxious sense of entitlement takes another step towards becoming an actual sense of accomplishment, the necessary anchor for a balanced sense of self-worth.

That approach to teaching is very contact-hours-intensive – but I am nevertheless convinced that A.C. Grayling is right: Treating contact hours as an inherently useful metric for educational quality is deeply, deeply flawed. I don’t begrudge the extended office hours and paper-commenting time and e-mailed responses to student questions and so on and on because those hours serve a genuine pedagogical purpose for my students – intro-level philosophy students. But those hours are only pedagogically useful because most of my students, and most first-year and surprisingly many second-year students at even top-tier U.S. universities, require what is in many respects a remedial education – because no one has ever asked them to do anything more than memorize and regurgitate and generally proceed through pseudo-educational exercises led by the nose.

In contrast, it would undermine every worthwhile pedagogical goal for me to spend my time exactly the same way on the non-remedial part of the educational process that Grayling is clearly discussing in his editorial. If third- and fourth-year students in an advanced seminar or tutorial expect or require that sort of intensive feedback-and-guidance approach, they ought not be in such a class at all. At that level, they simply must research and discover and invent for themselves if they are to truly learn – and if such hands-off, low-contact hours teaching forces students to go out on their own and re-invent some metaphorical wheels, that’s all to the good; it’s the only way for them to learn how those wheels actually work.

It’s interesting that your experience is so different to mine. Perhaps it depends what, and where, you are teaching. It’s probably true that high-demand courses (esp. in the high-demand universities) can keep standards up much more successfully than low-demand courses (i.e., in the humanities which, for better or worse, is often the ‘choice’ of those who didn’t have the grades to get into anything else).

And, of course, everything is a matter of degree – there is a happy medium in this at least. However much many academics might wish it, having only a tiny number of excellent students is not realistic or in keeping with the mission of a university, as you say. But at the other extreme, having huge numbers of very bad students is also not realistic and not in keeping with the mission of a university. In some places, university study is becoming nothing so much as a few extra years of high school.

All I can tell you is that our target student/staff ratio is much higher than was considered acceptable ten years ago, and we have been consistently lowering entrance scores to meet quotas. A large number of our students are ill-equipped (psychologically and academically) for university study.

Now, that’s not to say I don’t also have some wonderful students: I do. My good students are really very good, and are highly rewarding to teach. (I don’t just mean the cleverest ones, btw). But part of my dissatisfaction is precisely that I cannot properly cater to these students by challenging and extending them.

At the same time, all of my students would be better served if they were required to become more independent and self-directed learners. The problem is that many of them are highly resistant to this, and will flock to courses which spoonfeed and handhold. (Many appear to realise after graduation that they have not gained much of value from their university studies, but by then it’s too late).

It might not be immediately evident from my whingeing, but I actually do care about my students, and I especially care about whether they learn something in my courses. I’m really very happy to put time into helping them; one of the most rewarding parts of my job is when I can get a student to grasp something with which they were struggling.

But when an individual student expects me to re-teach each lecture to them personally because they ‘couldn’t concentrate’, or doesn’t even read the lecture notes or the text before asking me to assist them, it’s not helpful to pander to them. If your students are not routinely expecting this of you (and/or if your administration is not telling you to meet these expectations), well, that’s great, and I want to come work at your faculty!

Thanks, I think you’ve said things much better than I did. (It’s possible that my frustration is getting in the way of my ability to properly articulate my thoughts…)

I actually think that we need to distinguish providing support to students, from handholding and spoonfeeding.

What you describe as feedback-and-guidance counts as support; it’s something I do, and that I enjoy doing. (I like to think I do it fairly well, in fact). Of course it’s a regrettable state of affairs that our students need so much remedial guidance, but providing it is useful to them and rewarding for me. (I teach intro logic; many of my students simply freeze when confronted with symbols, but can be coaxed into competence and even comfort with enough gentle persuasion). My main problem here is that, while my patience may be infinite, my time is not, and I have repeatedly slammed into a wall trying to provide this sort of support to classes of >150 first-years.

Handholding and spoonfeeding, IMO, are quite different. This is something which doesn’t help students. I see my responsibility as not only getting them to understand specific material, but also giving them general skills for operating in the adult world. This means (inter alia) helping them to learn how to solve problems on their own, and explore ideas independently. Spoonfeeding them is something that goes against this responsibility. And emphasising number of contact hours per student encourages spoonfeeding rather than support.

Jennie Louise: “But when an individual student expects me to re-teach each lecture to them personally…it’s not helpful to pander to them.”

I agree!

“If your students are not routinely expecting this of you…”

Not routinely.

“Handholding and spoonfeeding, IMO, are quite different.”

I agree.

“And emphasising number of contact hours per student encourages spoonfeeding rather than support.”

Not necessarily; it depends upon what you do in that time.

I should point out, because I think it is relevant, that every subject I teach is available to external/distance students: up to 75% of my students may never attend a single class; my only contact may be by phone or email.

Students in my subjects must be organised, and work with the materials provided, because that’s how it works. BTW my largest class is usually 70 – 80 but, because of the way the subject runs, I would probably only see 20 – 30 during the week.

I now suspect our views are much less far apart than they seemed at first.

“People have now-a-days got a strange opinion that everything should be taught by lectures. Now, I cannot see that lectures can do so much as reading the books from which the lectures are taken. I know nothing that can be best taught by lectures, except where experiments are to be shewn. You may teach chemistry by lectures — you might teach the making of shoes by lectures!”

We talked of the education of children; and I asked him what he thought was best to teach them first. Johnson: “Sir, it is no matter what you teach them first, any more than what leg you shall put into your breeches first. Sir, you may stand disputing which is best to put in first, but in the mean time your breech is bare. Sir, while you are considering which of the two things you should teach your child first, another boy has learnt them both.”

“Now, I cannot see that lectures can do so much as reading the books from which the lectures are taken.”

That dawned on me in about my second semester at university, and I pretty much stopped going to lectures. Classes yes; lectures no. (Mind you it didn’t make much difference – lectures were mostly for first year stuff, so by the time it dawned on me, I had few lectures to go to anyway.)

“Now, I cannot see that lectures can do so much as reading the books from which the lectures are taken.”

It really depends on the topic, the objectives of the session and the teacher. I have attended some very good lectures given my staff who were amongst the best in their field. You couldn’t read what they were telling you because it wasn’t in the books: it was too new; but they knew because they were doing it.